Per Advertising Age, Google has now deputized its crawler-bots to be judge, jury, and executioner when it finds a suspected ad scammer; "It's now guilty until proven innocent, a fundamental shift for 'Don't be evil' Google." "Google now has a harsh new penalty for advertisers placing scam and malware ads: a lifetime ban." 

I have some questions about Google's new found seriousness to standing up to bad actors on the Net.

If Google's all-in-one crawler-bots are fully automated to detect, decide, and do in for life a suspected ad scammer, would that make the Googler that the accused can appeal to -- Google's new Supreme Court?

• Does the accused have the right to face their crawler bot-accuser in Google's court -- i.e. transparently see what the evidence is against them?  
• Is there no further appeal to Google's online advertising death sentence in the sovereign GoogleNation?  

If the ad scamming fraud abuse is serious enough to warrant the equivalent of a Google online advertising death sentence, why doesn't Google turn over those they have found guilty to authorities so they can prosecute them for criminal fraud? Or would that be an unfair form of double jeopardy?

To help the neutralism movement de-privatize the Internet and transform broadband providers into quasi-public-utilities, some attempt to rewrite the long and very bipartisan history of Internet privatization as a partisan history, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

The piece below ran on BigGovernment.com today. (One-page version here.)

Is FCC Declaring 'Open Season' on Internet Freedom?

The FCC, in proposing to change the definition of an “open Internet” from competition-driven to government-driven is setting a very dangerous precedent, that it is acceptable for countries to preemptively regulate the Internet for what might happen in the future, even if they lack the legitimacy of constitutional or legal authority to do so, or even if there is the thinnest of justification or evidence to support it.

The FCC's non-competitive-bid, sole source contract with the Harvard Berkman Center to "conduct an independent review of broadband studies to assist the FCC" with the National Broadband Plan -- appears to have been a near complete bust.

• The quality of the Berkman study is so poor, so riddled with key factual errors, so devoid of balance or objectivity, and so dependent on fatally-flawed economic analysis, that the FCC should not risk dragging down the credibility of the entire National Broadband Plan by relying on it in any way.
• The National Broadband Plan is too important a purpose, process, and effort to get right for the Nation to cut corners like the Berkman study routinely did. 

A summary of some of the critical flaws/errors of the Harvard Berkman study follow:

NTT-Japan commented that the Berkman study was "seriously in error." Specifically NTT said: "First, facilities based competition, not unbundling, has been the key to broadband growth in Japan." ... "Second, the report mistates the importance of 'government-subsidized loans' to the success of broadband deployment in Japan." ... "Third, the Berkman Center's draft study is internally contradictory."  

Google, flush with a $22 billion cash horde and generating a whopping ~$10 billion in annual free cash flow, was the only original funder of Clearwire not to provide new investment capital for Clearwire's broadband deployment expansion, in a $1.5b fund raise announced this week.  

• Clearwire's CEO Bill Morrow, said: "Today's news is also further validation of the importance of our 4G network to our strategic investors."
• The open question here is why was Google the only original funder to not believe it strategically important to continue to invest in accelerating a cutting-edge, national broadband buildout to all Americans -- or to invest in more national broadband competition?

In these tough economic times and with much less cash on hand or free cash flow to invest, Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Bright House, and Intel, all concluded it was indeed strategically important to continue to invest in accelerating broadband deployment to all Americans and increasing broadband competition.

Unfortunately, the hard-to-avoid conclusion here is that Google only invests in broadband when it has something specific to extract for Google's special benefit.

Anyone who cares about the competence of the studies the FCC has commissioned/outsourced to produce the FCC's National Broadband Plan, needs to read George Ford's devastating critique of the economic literacy of Harvard Professor Benkler's broadband survey for the FCC. 

In a nutshell, the econometric analysis Professor Benkler relied on would have earned a failing grade in any Harvard economics class, because the supply curve slopes in the wrong direction. Oops!

To be fair, Professor Benkler is a law Professor not an economist, but even an undergrad economics 101 student could have caught the fatal flaw in the analysis Professor Benkler relies upon.

The FCC should insist that Harvard employ competent reviewers to ensure that the basic information and analysis provided to the FCC is at least minimally competent in the disciplines covered by the survey.      

George Ou has a great new post -- "FCC NPRM ban on paid peering harms new innovators" -- that should be humbling and give some serious pause to the FCC and those pushing its proposed Open Internet regulations. 

The Internet's complex ganglia of technologies, networks, agreements, standards, incentives, collaborations, contracts, innovations, relationships, safeguards, protections, economics, etc. -- approaches the complexity of a brain. 

• The FCC's approach of "preserving an Open Internet" with the blunt instruments of FCC regulation is like pre-med student trying to do brain surgery with kitchen utensils and naively confident that he/she can figure it out as they go along.
• The FCC's problem is that this is very much like brain surgery, even real experts could mess this up, and if its done wrong it could cause permanent irreparable damage to the current Internet. 
• If the FCC makes a mistake in its Internet regulatory brain surgery -- in trying to surgically convert the functioning private Internet into a comparable functioning public Internet -- it could be like the functional equivalent of an Internet lobotomy. 

What is really scary is apparently how little regulatory humility there is on the subject of the Internet or appreciation that good intentions could easily become serious unintended consequences.

Google and eBay are planning to operate non-neutral broadband ISPs, Google at 47 airports, and eBay on airplanes, that will discriminate against some content for the benefit of their preferred content -- per a story on CNNMoney.com.

This puts the FCC in a pickle concerning its proposed open Internet regulations.

• First, it shows the ease for Google and eBay to enter and compete in the broadband market; where's the supposed market failure?
• Second, two of the biggest complainers seeking mandatory net neutrality regulations of broadband providers (including wireless for the first time) because of the potential for discrimination, are actually planning to engage in the very non-neutral broadband behavior that they want banned.

The open question is will the FCC be fair and technologically neutral in preserving the open Internet? 

• Or will Google and eBay get special treatment and protection from the FCC?

   

Google's secret algorithm discriminates in favor of The New York Times per a Politico video interview with Ken Auletta, author of the new book: "Googled, the End of the World as We Know It."

Mr. Auletta explains what he learned about Google's secret search algorithm. It favors sites/results based on "wisdom of the crowds" (i.e. most traffic or links), but it also favors authoritative sites like the New York Times, because Google grants them extra ratings points that elevate them in Google's search results.  

• Mr. Auletta goes on to defend Google for keeping the algorithm and the extra ratings points secret in order to prevent others from gaming the system. 

This information that Google proactively and specifically discriminates in favor of certain content over other content is a big deal for several reasons.

First, Google has long represented that it is a neutral algorithm where Internet users determine what ranks highest in searches, or in other words what content gets found and read and what doesn't.

Google's acquisition of AdMob, "the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace," will receive serious antitrust scrutiny focused on whether the deal lessens competition by extending search advertising monopoly to mobile devices. 

• Expect the review process to be a magnet for a host of antitrust, competition, and privacy product/services concerns much like the proposed Google Book Settlement has been a magnet for antitrust, competition, and privacy content concerns. 

First, Google is misleading with its blanket statement: "We don't see any regulatory concerns with this deal."